A bunch of years ago, I interviewed 11-time World Series of Poker champ Phil Hellmuth Jr. As a poker player, Phil has a reputation for loosing his cool during tournaments, but on this day he could not have been nicer.

I had brought along a copy of Hellmuth's book, "Play Poker Like the Pros," for him to autograph for a poker-playing friend. He readily signed it, and then he pulled out a new deck of his cards and autographed each black nine. As I recall, these were the cards that won Phil his first WSOP bracelet, but someone should correct me on that if I got that story wrong.